Attendees: arthurp, kaplan, dang (board), other, scg (board), janc
(president), valerie (board), mta (board), scott (secretary), aruba
(treasurer), and roadtrip.
0.00000077: The meeting was gavelled to order by janc at 7:49pm.
0.00000063: Treasurer's Report
Report for March: Took in $740.40, spent $584.05, for a gross
income of $156.35. 3 new members; rtgreen, jdeigert, and a person who
wishes to remain anonymous. The Grex Store is currently at -$216.60 in
cash, $384.10 in inventory.
Report for April: So far have taken in $388.40, of which $190
is for spare parts fund drive. Two new members, son1 and sisiro. April
has not been a good month so far.
0.00000060: Fund Drive:
Spare parts fund drive is currently about $220 short in pledges,
more than that short in money actually received. We have not yet raised
enough money to reach the goal, and the pledges seem to have stalled.
Valerie reported that she had just added announcements about the fund
drive in party and other places.
Some general discussion about raising money and/or reducing
costs:
1. Have a table at UM "FestiFall" to publicize Grex to UM
students?
2. Remove IC-Net internet link (our old internet link,
currently only a backup for us). This would save about $36/month in
phone lines.
3. Remove one or more dialin lines. This would save about
$18/month/line. Current statistics suggest that we have lines that are
only used for about 15 minutes a day or less. Needs to be discussed in
Coop before any decisions made.
4. Have newuser program send a mail message to each new account
about Grex funding. This avoids adding more text to the amount already
displayed by newuser while creating an account. Valerie would like to
do this; no apparent objections from others at meeting.
5. Send a mail message to each account after it has been active
for 3 months? Valerie and Janc are willing to work on the software to
do this.
6. T-shirt sales need more publicity.
7. Auction; next one to happen starting in June. Some ideas
like bigger-ticket items, Web page with photos of more items. Bret
Weintraub (formerly zook) has donated a lot of games for Macintosh and
other cool things.
(aruba reads a list of ideas condensed from recent Coop
discussion)
8. other: reduced rates for short period, perhaps $4/month
9. jared: Student discount
10. keesan: raise membership rates
11. rcurl: publicity & appeals to current users
12. cmcgee, other: students (secretary is not sure what is
being referred to here)
13. rcurl: already have discounted $0 rate
14. aruba, rcurl: send mail to 6 month old accounts asking for
money
15. mta: T-shirt giveaway (already being done; Misti is
raffling off a T-shirt to all new 1 year memberships).
16. janc: more fundraisers? more T-shirt sales? more
members?
17. rcurl, mta: email client wrapper plugging membership
18. aruba: bigger auctions
19. dpc: email to non-members
20. valerie: have newuser send mail to people (see above)
21. other: wrapper on email clients that goes away when they
become members
The current spare parts fund drive will be continued for a while
longer.
The current membership chair, omni, has not been doing much, and
is currently too busy to to anything. Find another person to take over
this job?
0.00000054: Publicity Committee:
The CTN (local cable TV) ad is currently running.
The 670 upgrade press release is currently posted in Coop, with
revisions being suggested.
Place an ad in the People's Food Coop newsletter? Some money
has been unofficially budgeted for advertising, but not approved by
Board yet.
The Arborweb WWW site (part of the Ann Arbor Observer) will have
a banner ad from Grex in August of this year.
Valerie has volunteered to design a business card sized flyer
for Grex (what it is, how to connect). Mta and Scott have each pledged
$5 for printing costs.
0.00000049: Technical Committee:
1. ISDN line had problems for about a week, eventually fixed by
Ameritech. Internet connection was somewhat reduced during this period.
2. Valerie has written a new connection statistics program
called "qgraph".
3. There is now a weekly automated check for reaped conference
fairwitnesses.
4. Reaped user's Web page listings are now automatically
deleted.
5. HVCN was temporarily down recently, preventing Backtalk from
displaying the graphic button images hosted by HVCN's server.
6. User account for auction archives accidentally deleted
recently; need to restore from tape backup.
7. Ryan (ryan1) has not been an active partyadm for several
months now; should he be removed from partyadm list?
8. New partyadms are trained and ready to start.
9. More staff notes added to Grex Web site, including hardware
and software listings for current system.
10. Our new 670 system had its first crash recently, after 2
weeks of uptime. We will probably start rebooting on a regular basis to
prevent this.
11. The number of ptys (telnet connections) has been increased
to 64, with no loss of system speed.
12. Mdw did a number of sendmail updates. One effect of this
is that .forward files must now be world-readable for forwarding to
work.
13. Arthurp has a PC for a mail processing machine nearly
finished, needing only a hard disk (later in the meeting, roadtrip
offered to donate a 340Mb IDE disk to Grex).
0.00000044: New Business:
Scott wants to buy an old monochrome monitor from Grex for $10.
This was subject of some discussion about non-profit rules. In
general, it's OK if anyone can make an offer to buy something from Grex,
not just board members and staffers. To do future sales, somebody will
need to post a list of available items so that regular Grex users can
make offers on items. Scg moved that "Cyberspace Communications, Inc,
sell a monochrome monitor to Scott Helmke for the price of $10.".
Seconded by janc. Voting went 5 in favor (dang, janc, mta, valerie,
scg), 1 against (aruba), and 1 abstaining (scott). Future sales will be
discussed online and at next Board meeting.
Janc has nearly completed the 501(c)3 application. During this
part of the meeting, the application was passed around to fill in Board
member's names and addresses. Janc will post an online version before
submitting the application to the goverment.
Arthurp brought in a "Genuine Sun Microsystems 63450-001 Grex
Hood Ornament", a gauge (with the needed stuck in the red zone) nicely
mounted on a wooden base. This can be placed on Grex in the Pumpkin.
Roadtrip offered to donate a used 340Mb IDE hard disk drive to
Grex.
Aruba is currently trying to contact the Pumpkin building
management to settle on what our electricity payments should be. Scott
and Valerie gave some information on how to contact the landlady.
0.00000041: The meeting is closed by janc at 9:34 pm.
Submitted April 26, 1998 by Scott Helmke, Secretary of the Board of
Directors.
12 responses total.
Nice minutes. Thanks, Scott.
Sunsets are usually red.....
Thanks Scott. A few additions: -I was handed about $300 during the course of the meeting, so April will indeed finish in the black. -I think it's fair to say that the consensus of those present for the fundraising discussion was that the first thing we ought to try is a mail message to everyone who isn't a member, sent when they pass their 3-month, 6-month, 9-month, etc. anniversaries on Grex. This requires putting data from newuser into an SQL database and then writing a program to read the data and send the mail. Valerie volunteered to do the first part and Jan the second. We also should discuss, here in coop, what the text of the mail message should be. -The reason I voted against selling a monitor to scott is I wanted there to be a standard procedure in place before we did it. My vote certainly had nothing to do with Scott personally. The rest of the board felt that this particular monitor had already been discussed in public enough (without anyone saying that Scott wasn't offering a fair price) to warrant going ahead with the sale. That's OK with me, I guess, but I hope that we get a procedure in place before the next time this comes up. I think someone ought to be appointed "Minister of Junk", and then be responsible for posting and maintaining an item in coop (possibly linked to classifieds) which lists all the excess junk which Grex owns and would like to get rid of. The Minister would also set a price for each item. Anyone could buy something just by responding in the item and sending in a check.
Jim is willing to help with pricing junk, same prices as Kiwanis. (This Sat he plans to have a half-price sale on monochrome monitors - the usual price is $5-15, and yard sales are much cheaper).
What's the *smallest* mono available with composite video input? Any that work on 12 VDC?
I have a 9" mono composite monitor, with both 110VAC and 12VDC power supplies. Make me an offer...
i wondered why email forwarding was failing..... system change and NO NOTICE to ppl with .forward files. i guess that this is now becoming a standard changed-operation procedure and frankly, it is very user UNfriendly, as i and others have noted after multiple previous changes. i do have a question about the change, did ANYone think to ask if users might object to having a world-readable .forward file? this is the same ole refrain to the same ole insensitivity. how about considering effects more significant than the ollie north approach, 'gee, this is a neat idea!' the ollie north approach ...... grex as a marine .... /duck
chill, TS. and breathe. slowly. in and out. &c...
re-read the last line ....<g>.
I would have prefered it if this change had been done with more discussion and public notice.
me too - ts is not the only one who was caught unawares.
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